How to Vote Catholic 2012

“How to Vote Catholic” was first published in 2004 by the Morley Publishing Group, Inc. Matt Smith and Deal Hudson decided it was a good idea to update and revise it for the 2012 election.

The revisions will address those issues that arose in the 2008 election and the 111th Congress, especially the debate among Catholics regarding health care.

Catholic Advocate will republish it chapter by chapter each week, both to make it easier for our community to digest and to invite your input for what will be the final version published later in the year.

How to Vote Catholic

By Deal W. Hudson

THE BASICS

l. Voting Our Values

Catholics make up about 30 percent of voters in national elections. These 30 million Catholics have the power to make our country a better nation, more welcoming to life, more supportive of families, and more effective in its programs to help the poor and marginalized.

In recent years, Pope John Paul ll and the U. S. bishops have been calling Catholics to renew their participation in American political life. That participation means, above all, to take the moral principles of the Catholic Faith into the voting booth.

As Benedict XVI put it last May, our political action should be undertaken “in a manner coherent with the teaching of the Church.”

COMMON GOOD

Catholic voters elect legislators whose job it is to make laws and policies that serve the common good. Thus, we expect our legislators to protect our basic human rights as stated in the Declaration of Independence— the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

These rights don’t mean just anything; they are grounded in an authentic understanding of human life.

Once the right to liberty became an excuse to deny the right to life for the most innocent and vulnerable in society, politics lost its grounding in the truth about human existence. Catholics must use their political participation to renew the political arena with the Church’s teaching to reconnect politics with the basic truths about the meaning of human life.

HUMAN DIGNITY

For example, when the Church uses the phrase “human dignity,” she is always referring to the relationship that human beings have with God due to their being created in his “human likeness” (Genesis l:26). To say there is human dignity is a reminder that the human person is from God and destined after this earthly life to live with God in eternity. That’s why an innocent life cannot be taken to make another life more comfortable or less complicated.

HUMAN RIGHTS

The notion of human rights follows from human dignity: Natural rights—the rights that precede any government or society—are the privileges or powers that we have the duty to respect so that all persons can seek genuine happiness in this world and the next (Catechism of the Catholic Church #l930). Politicians differ on whether or not these rights specify something that should be directly supplied by the government or something whose access by individuals or groups should be protected.

CATHOLIC VOTER

There is no Catholic vote in the sense of a bloc of voters who reliably support a specific set of policies. However, the record shows that Catholics who attend Mass regularly vote more often and express heightened concern for issues at the core of Catholic social teaching. The more politicians begin to notice that there are millions of religiously-active Catholics who vote their values, Catholics have an opportunity to influence their leaders.

FOUR CONFUSIONS

1. Catholics who vote should not worry about the charge of “imposing” their values on others. Catholics do not seek laws requiring citizens to attend church or observe Lenten fasts. On the contrary, Catholics seek the protection to basic human rights through legislation and policy, such as the right to life and the right to educational freedom. Laws and policies embody the values we–as a nation–agree to live by.

2. Catholics know that the protection of the unborn is the “dominant issue” among all political issues–though some have criticized Catholics as being “single-issue” voters. The principle underlying the rejection of abortion extends to other issues, such as bioethics, population, euthanasia, and defense. The mandate to protect life in politics is unconditional and should be the dominant issue in the minds of Catholics as they cast their votes.

3. Not all the political positions taken by candidates are of equal importance to Catholics. As dominant issue voters, Catholics should learn to give various issues their proper priority, thus preserving the hierarchy of values at the core of Church teaching and, by the way, the Founding of America itself.

4. Catholics are often confused by the difference between principle and prudential argument. General principles are proposed in Church teaching. How they are implemented in a specific policy or piece of legislation is a matter of prudential judgment. It’s crucial for Catholic voters to understand the principles so they may best consider the judgments put forward by politicians, Church officials, and other leaders.

Most importantly, Catholics should know there is no need to leave any part of the Faith outside of the voting booth. The tradition of Catholic moral and social teaching can be seen as a practical voting guide second to none.

Summary:

Catholics are obliged to participate in politics by voting.

Legislators are elected to serve and protect the common good, human dignity, and the rights of human persons.

Voters should have a clear understanding of the principles of Catholic moral and social teaching.

The life issues are dominant in the hierarchy of issues for the Catholic voter.

Ted, the world is full of useless steriotypes. Some believe that all those eye-talians steal. Some believe that “black people all gots rhythm,” and some equally benighted souls still believe that the Republicans are the party of, for and by fat cats, while Democrats are the party of he “little guy.”

Let’s wake up and smell the coffee, shall we? When Nancy Pelosi, the darling of the Democrats, became Speaker of the House, we tax-paying little guys had to pay for her to have an airliner for her private jet, because the jet that came with the job, originally, would need a refueling stop flying between DC and California.

The Democratic Party is presently run, behind the scenes, by billionaire George Soros. Their constant genocidal attacks against the third world are subsidized by world mighty billionaires like Bill Gates and Ted Turner. Apparently, every Marx has his Engels.

It’s the Democrats running the bailout of the banking and auto industry, keeping the big CEO’s well taken care of. That is not a Republican handout to the rich.

As for tax breaks to the rich being warfare against the poor, I have news for you. The rich hire the poor. The poor need their jobs. Punish the rich for investing in job-creating businesses, and the jobs go away, like mine did 18 months ago, and I might not find another one while your precious party of the little guy is punishing people for creating jobs. They do that to satisfy your class-warfare hatemongering.

One more thing. The reason abortion does not go away is because you and others like you keep electing enough Democrats to block every pro-life move ever made. Yes, you read that right. Unborn babies are YOUR blood sacrifice to a pagan god called the Democratic Party.

Please don’t try to dress that religion in Catholic clothes. They don’t fit, and you are annoying to those of us who are Catholics first and partisons a distant second.

It is well known the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) forces health care plans to provide coverage of abortion and use our tax dollars to pay for abortion. In addition, PPACA does not protect the conscience rights of …